Finding the right meeting room or venue to hire for your corporate event may feel daunting if you’ve been given the responsibility of sorting it all out, but it needn’t be a headache with a little careful planning.

Here’s our advice on finding the perfect meeting room to hire for your next business event.

1. Location

Location is everything when it comes to finding the right meeting room to hold your business event, so make sure it’s top of your list of priorities.

If your delegates will be travelling from various different locations, you need to find a venue that’s easily accessible from the motorway, as well as bus stops and train stations.

What’s more, if it seems hard to find, many people won’t even bother signing up if it’s an optional event.

Business First business centre locations are carefully chosen to offer excellent accessibility by car or public transport, so this is one less thing to worry about when booking a meeting room for your event.

Once you’ve found the right location for your meeting, training or networking event, give out clear directions to your invited guests, to avoid any dramas on the day.

2. Parking

Make sure parking isn’t an afterthought when booking a meeting room for your next business event. You may have found the perfect venue, but if you’re faced with a hoard of angry delegates who’ve had to park half a mile down the road and rush, it could overshadow the whole day.

Choose a business centre or meeting room venue which offers plenty of free parking on-site to keep your attendees happy and set yourself up for a calm, stress-free and successful day.

Make sure you speak to the business centre manager about where you and your guests should park, then give clear instructions to everyone attending.

This way, all your visitors will be prepared ahead of time, and there won’t be any disgruntled delegates arguing over parking spaces.

3. Refreshments

Whether you require tea and coffee making facilities, catering or a place nearby for delegates to visit during the lunch break, it’s important to suss out the refreshments situation at any meeting room venue before you book it for your event.

Every event is different, so weigh up what you need and speak to the business centre manager or a member of the team to find out what they can do to help you plan this side of your event.

All of our business centre meeting rooms have tea and coffee making facilities, and our experienced and friendly centre managers can assist you in planning any outside catering required.

They will also advise on any nearby cafes, restaurants, pubs or shops suitable for delegates to visit during a break, so you can provide your guests with all the information they need on the day.

After all, a long morning of training or networking can make for a hungry crowd of people, so it’s your job to ensure they will be well-fed and energised for an afternoon of activity.

4. Connectivity

Technical hiccups can make or break a business event, so it’s a wise move to research the equipment available before booking a meeting room for your business event.

Make sure it has good working WiFi you can use for free during the event, as well as any projectors, screens or cables you require to stay connected and get the message across to your guests.

5. Promotion

Finding the right venue for your business event is one thing, but promoting it is another. Most venues will help you organise the event itself, but can they help you to advertise it too?

Unlike other meeting room hire venues, our business centres can offer you promotional services too. We are happy to promote your event across our social media channels, through email marketing campaigns and blogs to help you make sure it reaches all the right people. We want your event to be a huge success, so we’re here to help you make that happen.

Your business centre manager isn’t just there to book your event - they are always at the end of the phone or an email to do anything they can to make it a real success.

Once the meeting room venue is booked, it’s time to come up with a strategy of how you’ll promote it to make sure as many people sign up as possible.

This may include social media advertising, posters, emails, flyers or any number of other marketing methods - think carefully about where your target audience is likely to see an advert, then focus your marketing campaign around this.

Meeting room hire at your local business centre

At Business First, we have boardrooms, training rooms and meeting rooms for hire at our business centres, so we know what it takes to make any event a success.

Each of our business centres has a centre manager on-site five days a week to not only look after tenants and keep the centre running smoothly, but also to work with external companies to help them run events out of our meeting rooms and training rooms.

We are here to help you plan everything to make your event a big hit - so give us a call to see if we can work together on your next event.